By now, you might have seen the video gone viral of the man stepping in between two squabbling teenagers in the middle of a residential street in Atlantic City, New Jersey. If you haven’t, check it out in the video below.
Honestly, there’s something beautiful about this moment because this whole interaction could have gone wrong. But instead, the boys ended the altercation by shaking hands. One of the surrounding teenagers who had gathered to watch the fight even shook the man’s hand. And the errand Ibn Ali Miller was running for his mother, resulted in the video being shared by the likes of LeBron James and Snoop Dogg.
Today, the man who stepped in is being honored for his good deed. 26-year-old Ibn Ali Miller, from Atlantic City, was honored by the city council and Mayor Don Guardian, who said:
“A dozen positive lessons could be taught from that four-minute video alone,” Atlantic City Mayor Don Guardian said in a statement. “He fearlessly spoke so much truth to those young kids. We need more adults in the world that are willing to step in to help pull back our youth from the edge.”
Miller, a married father of six, spoke about the incident but spent a significant amount of time thanking his mother Sabrina Winters for her influence and guidance in his life.
“I want to first and foremost, give God all of the praise and all of the recognition as none of us are in control of anything, not even of ourselves. He is the one who holds everything. After that, I would like to thank my mom…yeah…When I was young, we grew up in the projects…when I would get on punishment she would have to make me read books and I had to either write a short story or a poem…She’d make me read…I’m crying because this whole situation, it deeply saddens me. It deeply saddens me. And the fact that it’s unbelievable…this should be very believable. This should be the norm and it should be regular. But I don’t want to take the attention because these young men, they were going to fight. And they decided not to. Not only did they decide not to fight, they decided to shake hands and display unity. These are teenagers. The adults in our community have a problem with this issue. And they displayed it very well. So not only do I want to thank my mom, I want to thank the people who raised these young men as well. Because they raised them to be young men of reason. Which seems to be a rare trait in our community. The person I want to give the most praise is my mother. Because she taught me about God and she raised me to be who I am. She supports me and aides me, she encourages me. And when we were young, she put pretzel sticks across the kitchen table. She said, ‘Those pretzel sticks are the right path. The rest of the table is the wrong path. It’s very, very difficult to stay on the right path, as we would find that out through the years. Even through trials and tribulations, my mother stuck by me. I had children very young, my mother aided me and supported me. I don’t know, people get fifteen minutes of fame a lot and I would like to use second of the fifteen minutes to send gratitude to my mother. Please give her a round of applause.”
You can watch Miller’s speech in the video below.
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